His previous work at Sterkfontein dated the Little Foot skeleton to about 3.7 million years old, but scientists are still debating the age of other fossils at the site. As a doctoral student, he devised a method for dating buried cave sediments that is now used by researchers all over the world. Granger specializes in dating geologic deposits, including those in caves. Paleoanthropologists and other scientists have studied Sterkfontein and other cave sites in the Cradle of Humankind for decades to shed light on human and environmental evolution over the past 4 million years.ĭarryl Granger, a professor of earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences in Purdue University’s College of Science, is one of those scientists, working as part of an international team. Ples, and the nearly complete skeleton known as Little Foot. Since then, hundreds of Australopithecus fossils have been found there, including the well-known Mrs. Hominins includes humans and our ancestral relatives, but not the other great apes. Sterkfontein was made famous by the discovery of the first adult Australopithecus, an ancient hominin, in 1936. The “Cradle of Humankind” is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in South Africa that comprises a variety of fossil-bearing cave deposits, including at Sterkfontein Caves. This would make them older than Dinkinesh, also called Lucy, the world’s most famous Australopithecus fossil. Now, a dating method developed by a Purdue University geologist just pushed the age of some of these fossils found at the site of Sterkfontein Caves back more than a million years. The earth doesn’t give up its secrets easily – not even in the “ Cradle of Humankind” in South Africa, where a wealth of fossils relating to human evolution have been found.įor decades, scientists have studied these fossils of early human ancestors and their long-lost relatives. Is the Genetic Literacy Project a corporate ‘front’? GLP responds to ongoing false allegations from US Right to Know / Organic Consumers Association / SourceWatch / Baum Hedlund / Church of Scientology.GLP Integrity Policies: Privacy, Conflicts of Interest, Verification, Fact-Checking Standards and Corrections.Mission, Financial Transparency and Governance.
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